Dear Malstrom.
Hi, long time reader so I thought I’d finally fire off an e-mail. I
have been reading your posts since I found you “bridman fallacy”
article and find myself agreeing with most of what you write. So I
thought I’d just add my thoughts to the mix regarding the main things
I really HATE about modern gaming:
DLC/Patches: AKA “Incomplete Gaming”. There once was a time when I
would go out and buy a game. This game would take a fair bit of time
for me to save up for, but even if it was considered “bargain
carousel” stuff (you know, those cassettes you could buy for under £5)
it would be a COMPLETE GAME. I bought a game for C64 called F15 Strike
Eagle and it came with all sorts of things. For instance, a map of the
arenas for one, but more importantly, the game was complete. It didn’t
need extra patches or DLC in order to make it more interesting or even
playable in the first instance. Ditto my copy of Thrust (a brilliantly
addictive clone of Gravitar). I feel nowadays devs tend to use DLC as
a crutch. They’re so lazy, not only do they not release a playable
game (with many games requiring software additions to iron out bugs
they SHOULD have spotted in the development process in the first place
– e.g. Il-2:BoP, brakes have been “accidentaly” left out of the
joystick mapping entirely – talk about BASIC oversight, they now need
a patch to set this right)….but we instead have to pay FULL PRICE
for incomplete games because they release extra bits which they ask us
to pay AGAIN for later on. The mind boggles. What ever happened to
simply releasing a FULL and COMPLETE game in the first place? Why,
when asked to pay up to £50 for a game am I then asked to pay more to
“top it up”?
This practise of devs definitely rushing out games early and
incomplete and then deciding to fix things later on (whilst requesting
MORE money for the “privelage” of doing so) is absolutely disgusting
imo…we never had this growing up and we used to have great games so
it’s just corporate greed here.
Price: Then there’s the price. £50 for a game? One that lasts only 8
hours or so? These “games” companies are smoking some strong shit.
Haven’t they ever wondered WHY there is a booming 2nd hand market for
games? It’s because when you don’t supply value for money, your
customer will try to recoup some of that value in another way. The two
biggest (one disagreeable the other agreeable) I can see happening are
Piracy (spending £1 (the cost of a blank DVD) on a game with a
perceived value of £10 is better for some than spending £50 in the
shops), and the second is Reselling (You think it’s worth £20, you buy
it for £50 and sell it on after 8hrs (you’ve now completed it) for
£30…..total money spent by you is £20 which is roughly what you
thought it SHOULD be worth in the first place).
If the “industry” wants to cut down on Piracy and Reselling it should
really start providing value for money – give us decent content for a
decent price and we, the customer, will NOT feel the need to try and
recoup those extra dollars “lost” in other ways.
The other thing about price is that I seem to remember most games in
my childhood having a similar price throughout it’s shelf life. Going
into a “sale” was considered a great bonus. Nowadays you only have to
wait 2-3 weeks before these ridiculous £50 games cut down to half
price or less. Why? Is it because maybe, just maybe, we’re being
overcharged for the content we’re receiving? Maybe “back in the day”
the prices where cheaper but also the amount of content was higher, so
the perceived value was relatively good and unchanged for long periods
of time. Whereas nowadays the companies are taking the piss trying to
charge stupid amounts for 8 hr long games and after 2-3 weeks of no or
very few sales finally relent and give us a more realistic price in
order to shift stock. Why don’t they just do this in the first place?
Alternatively, why not charge the same but actually deliver us games
with £50 worth of content in it? (either way would do me fine).
Ancillaries: What would you rather have: (1980’s) Auf Wiedersehen
Monty (You mention music in some of your posts……now THERE was a
soundtrack and a half – still love it to this day), massive colourful
wall poster included, came in a box (not a cheap plastic), a complete
game, £8 …. or …. (2000’s) “insert generic fps here”, comes with a
plastic doll in a metal case (woopee </sarcasm>), STILL needs patches
to work properly, may need DLC as we’ve released it incomplete, oh and
pay us up to £70 ($140ish) for this one please.
What used to be pretty standard in many games has now become an excuse
to charge even more ridiculous prices for cheap add-on tat than
before. Do games execs not realise that in actual fact most consumers
see through this idea for revenue as pure greed, as none of it adds to
the content of the game yet they have the audacity to try and charge
us MORE for it?
Trophies/Achievements: Where in the hell did this come from? Again,
laziness on the part of devs imo. What used to be the case was that
companies used to spend a bit longer in order to turn a B+ game into
an A+ game has now turned into “well I can’t be bothered to think up
new levels or code in new ideas…..I know….I’ll just randomly add
bits of flotsam and jetsam throughout the levels and give folks an
electronic badge when they collect them all (similar to those “I’ve
been brave at the Dr’s today” stickers little children receive when
getting their jabs)”.
What they don’t seem to twig is that I don’t think gamers regard many
of these as “content”. An example is the new Batman game. Good game
imo, but after completing it I didn’t think the random Riddler
Trophies (flotsam and jetsam, dotted around the landscape) added AT
ALL to the experience. I even tried to carry on trying to find them
all after completion but it just bored me.
Similar the Uncharted 2 “treasures”. Nice to find them in game but
don’t really add that much imo. I suspect it’s because on the whole
you just stumble across them rather than them being integral to the
gameplay. Can you imagine getting “stickers” for every goomba you
stomped on in Super Mario World? Who cares?
This concept of reserving a proportion of development to these
inconsequential things is bad for the industry imo. I’d rather pay for
a game with 90% effort on content than one with 50% effort on content
and 40% on “aren’t you a clever boy then” stickers.
User Generated Content: I must admit, I think LBP’s failure was due
mainly to it’s extremely poor/sloppy controls and physics (sometimes
you make a jump, sometimes you randomly don’t) and stupid “lives”
system more than the UGC aspect of it. I must admit though that Wii
Music is perceived as boring primarily because it lacks content of
it’s own (I wonder how many games cited as “boring” are simply due to
‘lack of content’ rather than being ‘uninspiring’ in respect of
gameplay).
Its all about teh grafx: No it isn’t. Why is this gen SO dominated by
graphics whores? Can’t they see beyond the sparkly sheen on top? One
of the BEST games I have played this gen is Geometry Wars Galaxies on
the Wii. You can play that on a standard def 480i set with no
problems.
It’s all about the cutscenes: I don’t mind a few here and there as
long as it adds to the game, but I’d rather watch a proper movie than
sit through something like Metal Gear Solid 4 which is more “cutscene
compilation” than “game”.
My console’s better than your console: I don’t care. Nor do I
particularly care about ANY of the games companies because they
apparently only care about revenue (not me or what I want). I think
viral messengers and fanboys are really souring things at the moment.
It makes me smile thinking how they’ve been squirming these past 2-3
years whilst the Wii and DS run away with success whilst catering to
“retard gamers” and grannies (ha).
For some reason it makes me imagine Luftwaffe Pilots puffed up with
aryan supremacy in the early 40’s having the smiles drop off their
faces as they fail time and time again to defeat the “backward” reds
in the east or “insignificant” RAF in the west.
Games Journo’s/websites: Those who consistently denigrate or plain
ignore what they percieve as “casual” Wii games (which as far as I can
tell is classed as casual simply if you can play it with a wiimote),
but spend pages and pages blathering on and on about the next game in
“franchise x – HD”. I initially thought their hostility would soften
as the Wii became more successful, but if anything it’s gotten worse.
The reason can only be that they see their own demise more and more
clearly with each passing day. They may not admit it (even to
themselves) but the end of the industry should be a breath of fresh
air to many of us. Even the Big N should pulls it’s head out of it’s
UGC backside and take note (as it will follow rapidly if it keeps
producing crap games for us).
I for one can’t wait.
Nintendo‘s gigantic head: filled with all sorts of arrogance? I
remember thinking wondrous things when I tried a wiimote for the first
time. Things like “what would a lightsabre game feel like”, “ooh, this
could be a good bow and arrow“, and “wow, isn’t this fun”. So where
are the follow ups then Nintendo? Where is the lightsabre game? If you
can’t persuade LucasArts why not AT LEAST make a basic sword fighting
game yourselves (instead of rely on Ubisoft). What about all the other
great ideas you promised and we imagined? Where are they? Did you by
any chance fall into the same trap that Sony and MS did……thinking
about money first rather than customers?
I could go on and on but i fear I’ve bored you enough for now ;).
Take care and thanx for taking the time to read my ramblings :)
More gamers than you know will agree, in spirit if not specifics, with what you said.
The last thing you said about Nintendo I find most interesting. People did not buy the Wii for UGC or even for Mario, Zelda, Metroid, and even Wii Sports. They bought it for new experiences with gaming. They want to explore new game content with motion controls. In other words, why is something like bow shooting or sword fighting limited only to minigames in Wii Sports Resort? They could be new games in and of themselves.
Some people blame me for holding up the old carnard that “Nintendo needs to make new IPs.” But let us correct the language. IP stands for “intellectual property” and that is a lawyer’s word. That is not a gamer’s word. IP is the industry term. Well, screw that. We should always talk in gaming language, not industry language. All these terms of “IP”, “franchise”, “SKU” are all pollutions on the discussion of gaming.
Nintendo was a big name even before the NES. Nintendo had risen up to the ranks of Namco and other companies because Donkey Kong had risen up to the ranks of Pac-Man and other arcade hits. Popeye and Mario Brothers were also pretty good hits, thought not as big as Donkey Kong.
NES did not sell because of sequels to Donkey Kong and Popeye. There were new content propositions combined with the new gameplay propositions. The Legend of Zelda was not just a new gameplay offering, it was a new content offering. Metroid was a new content offering as well as a new gameplay offering. Kid Icarus, Kirby, Star Tropics, and others were all new content offerings. Not all these content offerings succeeded. Some fell a little flat due to whatever reason. In the case of Kid Icarus, I think it is the brutal first stage gameplay that killed that content offering as an example.
A voice rises from the back to say, “And what about that sequel to Mario Brothers? Hmmm?” But this backs up my point even more. Mario Brothers and Super Mario Brothers have very similar gameplay. You run and jump around. Sure, there are no powerups, scrolling, or flagpole but this game came out in 1983. That same core gameplay skeleton is largely the same in Super Mario Brothers. The major difference between the two games is the Mushroom Kingdom. Super Mario Brothers was all about the Mushroom Kingdom. It was a new content offering that was lightning in a bottle. No one had ever combined Alice in Wonderland and gaming before. It was the content of Super Mario Brothers, not the gameplay, that formed and molded the TV shows, cereal, pajamas, blankets, and the general Mario madness of that time. When looking back, I realize kids were never introduced to Alice in Wonderland. Mario did that for them.
In the 16-bit generation, Nintendo put out sequels to the content offerings that worked in the 8-bit generation. Metroid, Zelda, Mario, Punch-Out, and Kirby and dropped the ones that fell flat (Kid Icarus, Star Tropics, etc). But there were a few new content offerings. Donkey Kong Country, though a Rare game, could not be said to be anything remotely like the original Donkey Kong. It offered a new world. And it was a massive hit. Starfox was a big hit too even though the game was designed to use the FX chip. But so was Stunt FX race. Why do we remember Starfox and not the FX racer? Starfox offered a new world.
One of the most famous and celebrated game companies was Origin whose motto was: “We create worlds.” Any die-hard Ultima fan would agree that while the Ultima games were all part of the same “franchise”, they were all practically different worlds.
Blizzard is the argument for the importance of quality content. Blizzard does not invent new gameplay. Blizzard is content to let others pioneer the new gameplay. What Blizzard does instead is slow bake the content. Blizzard games are not technically or gameplay groundbreaking. But they are extremely well polished. Or to use a more specific example, Warcraft 3 was not an update on Warcraft 2 with Alliance and Horde. Very early in the game, Warcraft 3 rejects that formula and practically blows up the world. The end of Warcraft 3 (which provided the foundation for World of Warcraft) resembles nothing of the world of Warcraft 2. This was disapointing to longtime fans, but it had to be done.
While I am not a Call of Duty player, how much of a difference was there between Call of Duty 3 and 4? There was a massive world change from WWII to modern day which became extremely popular. Now look at those FPS games that are nothing but some new gimmick thrown in. They are failing because they think in gameplay terms, not content terms. Instead of a gimmick gameplay altercation, changing the content would be far more enticing. A FPS set in medieval times, like Hexic, would get far greater attention than another sci-fi FPS but with “new gameplay weapons”. Resistance has the honor of being so mixed up that it combines both WW2 and Sci-Fi cliches in one game! And I didn’t think that was possible!
Nintendo will point to Pikmin. I say that is fine, but that is more of a flat hit if any. Miyamoto points to Wii Sports and Wii Fit as new IPs. Technically, he is right that they are new “franchises”. But they are not new content. As a disruptive company, Nintendo knows it must set up a process to offer new gameplay offerings. But there is no process to offer new content offerings.
WiiWare was set up to present new gameplay offerings. Iwata wants to put out demos because WiiWare sales are not where Nintendo wants to be. The way how WiiWare is philosophically constructed, the consumer becomes little more than a paying guinea pig for these “new gameplay ideas”. There is no emphasis on content.
It is risky to experiment with new content in games that cost bazillions. But it is more risky not to. Super Mario Brothers did not start off with bazillions of dollars. Neither did Zelda. Neither did Metroid. They started off very small since they were on the NES. And people still buy these games today.
I never understand why new content offerings are not being in place for a small service like WiiWare. I know Iwata and Miyamoto are struggling to teach the younger Nintendo developers what they know. But Iwata and Miyamoto learned what they did was by making brand new games that were very small (as all games were back then). Why not let the younger developers try their hand at the small games? If it succeeds at the small level, it may or may not be greenlighted for the “big game” of the retail. New gameplay without new content is like reading different words and paragraphs to illustrate the same exact story.
Blizzard gets away with just Starcraft, Diablo, and Warcraft because each game attempts to explore that fantasy setting more. Fans of Starcraft are excited to return to Starcraft’s world and explore it more. Note that the Blizzard games that don’t do this, that totally switch to a new gameplay form, end up being cancelled (Ghost, Warcraft Adventure).
You know a game has rich content if it can spill out and become a book or some other media. People talk about craftsmanship of the gameplay. But no one talks about craftsmanship of the game worlds themselves.
But aside from that tangent, what I believe is going on in “Game Industry” is far more sinister than the simple revenue pie increasing appetite. I believe the “Game Industry” wants to become a Pavlovian Machine. What does that mean? It means it wants consumers to become easily manipulated with certain gestures. A good example of this is “achievements”. A real achievement in life does not have a window come up and say “achievement”. People who are driven towards “achievements” are being manipulated in that pavlovian way. It is disgusting.
In the past, we used our imagination when playing games. Today, we use our imagination for games that are coming out. This is intentional by the “Game Industry”. All this ‘hype’ and ‘trailers’ and ‘viral messenging’ is to massage the imagination thinking that “Lucid Dream” is going to come out with that game. This is how all sales end up in the first few weeks. Then, people’s hype goggles wear off, and they realize they bought trash. Then , they sell it.
The Imagination is being improperly used by the “Game Industry”. We want games to stimulate our imaginations within the game, not outside the game. All the “Game Industry” efforts are to stimulate imaginations only outside the game for the expressed purpose to drive purchases. Sure, this is marketing as its finest.
But the point is that there used to be gaming and marketing as seperate entities. Now, it is all marketing. When you buy the game, the marketing keeps going. “Buy DLC!” “Buy our hint book!” “Subscribe to the elite guild!” “In game advertising!”
Marketing is necessary for business. But we want the marketing to be removed from the product itself. It is like buying a TV and the TV keeps co-opting what you are doing to broadcast commercials for similar products for that TV company.
Imagination is being improperly used by the “Game Industry”. This is why it will die.
The “Book Industry” died in a very similar way. Instead of putting out books that stimulated the imagination, the “book industry” stimulated the imagination for future books… all of which never live up to the hype. To this day, only a very small segment of the population reads books. So small that Steve Jobs doesn’t bother putting books up on iTunes.
But people DO read and enjoy reading. The Internet is proof of this. The book industry died not because of the lack of readers out there but because the “book industry” became more interested in “industry” and not the books. The same is happening in the “game industry”.
The “Game Industry” is not passionate about games. It is passionate only about “Industry” This means orgasms over sales numbers, business models, marketing techniques, franchises, and all that other rot that has poisoned the discusson of gaming. When was the last time you heard the “Game Industry” talk about the customer experience?
Exactly.
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